Lunch

One of the disadvantages of being busy with building at this time of year is that it doesn’t leave much time for fungus forays.

These though we couldn’t miss, growing large on our bottom terrace. Parasol mushrooms (Lepiota procera, or Macrolepiota procera. Common names in Portuguese: fradelho, pucarinha, gasalho, centieiro, capoa, roca, chouteiro, parasol, soutelho, cogumelo da calcinha). Edible and excellent. I’d earmarked them for a special lunch today though when I went to pick them this morning, two beauties had mysteriously vanished without trace (as had the ring of mushrooms under the loquat tree) and a third had been decapitated by a large black slug. Clearly we aren’t the only mycophiles around the quinta … Luckily there were another two still standing, so we at least got to enjoy a side dish, if not the full meal we’d been looking forward to.

Having gotten tuned in to mushrooms, I then spotted these on the top terrace.

The aptly named and strangely coloured Aniseed toadstool (Clitocybe odora) and a puffball, Calvatia excipuliformis (or Lycoperdon saccatum). Both edible, though the puffball only when young.